Don't Forget To Breathe
by Snows Of Yester-Year
Summary: Jinora is spending day and night preparing to test for her Airbending tattoos, and Ikki takes it on herself to make sure her sister doesn't forget to take time for herself.


**My entry for the 2012 Avatar Ladyfest, written for yours-truly. **

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Jinora woke up well before dawn as she tended to do these days, staring blankly out the window at the faintest whisper of morning light that had started to filter into the star-studded night. She still felt tired, but she knew she wouldn't drop back off to sleep. Already the familiar anxiety was coiled in her chest, ready to spring her out of bed and over to her reading desk for another long day of practice and study.

She rolled to her feet, stretching and yawning before haphazardly making the bed. She stretched the sheets and blankets tight, smoothing out all the creases she could see in the dim light. She would study one of the old scrolls her father was allowing her to keep in her room for the time being until breakfast, then she would go train with Ikki before studying some more. It promised to be a long, tiring day, but the end result would be worth it. She was due to get her arrows soon. She was close, her mastery of Airbending almost total, but she still had work to do before she was ready to test for the final level.

After the sun had come up and the island's inhabitants started to stir, she made her way towards the dining room, nose buried in an old book of forms. Her father had banned reading at the table years ago after Jinora accidentally burst into tears over a notably heart-wrenching scene in the middle of a meal, but he was waiving the rule in light of her impending exam for the last level - and her bad habit of ignoring her mothers wishes for her not to take her meals to her room.

Her arrows were a big deal - not just to Jinora, but in general. She would be the first among her siblings to earn the arrows, the second Airbender after her father to receive them since the war decimated their culture. The thought of the sky-blue marking arcing across her limbs made her heart swell with delight and eagerness and just a hint of pride, although she hushed those emotions lest they make her cocky and over-confidant. She wanted to make her father proud, and she couldn't do that if she messed this up.

What's more, the arrows were the ultimate symbol of her heritage and who she was. She was an Airbender, one of the last, and the tattoos would tell this to the entire world once she received them. She loved being an Airbender, and she literally could not wait to embrace this facet of her culture to the fullest - even if it meant training all day until her body was sore and all-nighters spent studying instead of sleeping.

Adding to her stress was the fact that her father was starting to not-so-subtly groom her to take over his position as representative of the Air Nomads for the Council. She had been hesitant at first, unsure that she was really the right person for this job. Tenzin was hardly young, but he was also certainly not going to be vacating his position as representative in the foreseeable future. By the time they needed a new representative, she couldn't help but think, she wouldn't be the only option; someone else would be old enough to take over. Ikki or Meelo surely, quite likely Rohan, too. Even her youngest siblings, little three-year-old Taro and baby Sonam, might be old enough to take over at that point.

But she went along with him to occasional meetings anyway, quietly observing the proceedings and making notes of how everything was handled in the even that she wound up being chosen by the island to be their representative. She saw it as being intrinsically tied to her identity as an Airbender, a duty she must perform, and she took it just as seriously despite her reluctance.

She was halfway done with her meal and silently turning the form she was examining over in her head when Ikki entered the room, bright and chipper as always.

"Good morning, Jinora!" she sang, sitting down next to her. "What are you reading? Oh, you're studying again? Which form? Oh that one looks hard! Do you want to practice after breakfast? Do you think you'll be able to do it? Do you need me to help?"

With patience borne from fourteen years of coping with Ikki's chattering, Jinora slowly marked her place in the book and slid it to the side, taking a sip of her tea. "We can practice," she said. "I want to master that form today."

Ikki's eyebrows shot so high they almost touched her hairline. "Today? When you've only just started studying it?"

"I can do it," Jinora said confidently, plucking up her chopsticks to polish off the rest of her breakfast. "I just have to apply myself and focus. It won't be hard."

"Why are you in such a rush to learn?" Ikki said, voice bordering on a whine. "Come on, Jinora, you shouldn't rush your tattoos!"

Jinora sighed and set her chopsticks back down with a light clatter. "Ikki, I'm seventeen," she said firmly but tiredly.

"So?"

"So I should have mastered this by now," she said.

Ikki let out a loud, unladylike snort, eliciting a scowl from Jinora.

"Don't laugh at me," she chastised her younger sister, brusquely tossing the cover back open and turning the pages with crisp, sharp movements. "I mean it, Ikki!"

Ikki was visibly fighting down a smile. She leaned heavily on the table, fixing Jinora with a hard look. "Didn't you pay attention to _any _of Dad's lessons about patience?"

"I think I paid more attention than you did!" Jinora said, affronted.

"Then you should know that rushing getting your tattoos is _completely _counterproductive," she said flippantly.

Jinora's face twisted into an uncharacteristic frown. "Grandpa Aang was barely twelve when he got his arrows," she said. "I should have been able to earn them years ago!"

"Yeah, and Dad was almost nineteen when he got his!" Ikki said. "Different people work at different paces, there's nothing wrong with it! And you don't need your arrows to know you're a talented Airbender."

"It's not about my talent," Jinora said, combing her bangs out of her face. She studied the diagram before her - a complicated, spiraling myriad of footwork for the form in question. "Having these tattoos is an immense honor. Every Airbending master for millennia has had them. They're deeply symbolic and spiritual, mimicking the pattern adorning the coats of the fir-"

"Yeah, yeah, sky bison, original Airbenders, blah, blah, blah," Ikki cut in, stretching.

"You're disrespectful."

"And for an Airbender, you sure do forget to breathe a lot," Ikki challenged.

Jinora pulled her gaze away from the book, blinking perplexedly at her sister. "Beg pardon?"

"You're rushing," Ikki accused, her voice bearing a gentle note it had lacked before. "And you're always so wrapped up in the details, making sure you follow every instruction perfectly. You don't cut yourself any slack at all." She stood and shut the distance between them, kneeling beside Jinora to wrap her in a strong, steady hug.

"Relax," she breathed. "Loosen up or you can't flow."

It was astonishingly sound advice. Jinora's Airbending prowess was unquestionable, but there were definitely occasions where Tenzin had made wry comments about his oldest daughter having a bit of her mother's nation in her - the rigidity of Earth coming out in her adherence to her lessons, the silence of rocky mountains and gaping canyons echoed in her own quiet, thoughtful nature.

Still, she was skeptical. She was not being impatient; she was simply applying herself and refusing to waste time. When she said as much to Ikki, her younger sister rolled her eyes.

"That's enough of that," she said, standing. "You need a day off and I'm not taking no for an answer!"

Jinora frowned. "Wait, you can't-"

"Can so!" she chirped, reaching down to pull Jinora to her feet. "Come on, we're going! We'll go down to the beach and head to the city for lunch - ooh, we should go see a play, too! And go take a taxi ride through the park! I have some money saved, it should be enough!"

"I can't just waste an entire day," Jinora balked. "I should be training, Ikki!"

Ikki gleefully ignored her pleas, and before Jinora knew it, she was on the island's north beach with her five siblings, aghast as she held tiny Sonam and watched the others run amok. Ikki, Meelo, Rohan, and Taro had stripped to their undergarments, crashing through the shallow, icy surf, their shrieks piercing the air like the cries of gulls.

Jinora sighed, glancing down at her youngest, slumbering sister.

"How is it you're the quiet one here?" she mused.

Casting another sullen glance towards her out-of-control siblings, Jinora knelt briefly on the blanket she had spread out on the sand, gingerly settling Sonam down in the shade of the umbrella she brought to shield her. She didn't want to go in the water and leave Sonam, so she practiced. She spun around as she went thorough the form piece-by-piece in her minds eye, her deft feet kicking up sand as she danced through the motions, the breeze around her picking up as it yielded to the commands her sweeping arms and twirling feet sent.

"HEY! JIN-O-_RAAAA_!"

She rolled to a stumbling halt, the wind settling, and glared out at Ikki. She was stumbling from the surf, wringing out her dark, shining hair and wrinkling her nose at her.

"No practicing on your day off!" she admonished. "You're supposed to be relaxing!"

Jinora didn't even try to fake being contrite. "I can't leave Sonam," she said, gesturing down to the snoozing baby, "so I can't go in the water, and I didn't want to just sit and do nothing."

Ikki huffed, blowing a lock of hair away from her forehead. "Well, why didn't you say so?" She turned back to the water where Meelo was chasing Rohan, Taro laughing as she clung to her oldest brothers back. "Hey, guys!"

Rohan ground to a halt that Meelo didn't notice in time, causing him to topple over him and crash into the water. Taro shrieked delightedly, splashing her brothers before running towards the sand. Meelo picked her up, holding her above the water, grinning as her tiny legs pinwheeled against the air.

"Oh, never mind," Ikki said, rolling her eyes. "I'll just stay up here with you. Oh, oh, I know! We can build a sand temple!"

"A sand temple?" Jinora echoed wearily, nose crinkled.

"Yeah!" Ikki grabbed a small bucket she had swiped form the bison stables and ran back down to the water, filling it with the salty swirl of a frothing blue wave. "Look for some seashells and twigs and stuff to decorate it with!"

Jinora sighed, glancing around at the sand for any materials. There were a few broken chips of shells, shining pearly whites and creamy pinks and shimmering, iridescent purples. She gathered as many as she could carry and deposited them near the blanket, watching Ikki pile wet sand up. Her attempts at spires fell flat - quite literally. They collapsed almost as soon as she built them, crumbling in her hands.

"You put too much water in," Jinora said, scooping up handfuls of dry sand. "And make it wider at the base so it doesn't fall over as easily."

Ikki shook her hair from her face, frowning. "Man, sand temples are hard!"

"This was your idea, though," Jinora said, amused. She carefully shaped some of the sand in a tiny mound, piling more and more on top, carefully rounding it into a small tower. She grabbed a couple of shells to tile the roof. "See? Like this."

"You're better at this than I am," Ikki sighed. "I'll just build a moat."

"Temples don't have moats."

At that moment, Sonam started crying, startling both sister. Wiping her sandy hands on her skirt, Jinora plucked the baby from her blankets, rocking her and murmuring down to her, "Oh, no, it's okay, I've got you. Are you hungry? I should probably take you back up."

Ikki shot her a pointed glare. "But you'll come right back down, right?"

"Of course I will," she said with a quick smile. "I'll be back before you know it."

In Jinora's defense, she did have every intention of returning to the beach as soon as she handed Sonam back off to her tired-looking mother - maybe running down to play in the water a bit, or finding some driftwood to stabilize the temple so they could build it higher. But before she started back to the steps, she paused in the courtyard, the form she had been studying this morning dancing in her head.

She glanced at the stairs, knowing her sister was waiting for her at the bottom and knowing that she would be yelled at again if she tried to practice down on the beach.

"I'll just run through it once up here," she muttered.

Her form was a bit rough, but it was a complicated move. She expected that. Silently mulling over her mistakes, she tried again, slowing down so she could get her movements right. That time was better, but ways to improve immediately bloomed in her mind, spurring her on to perform it again and again.

She had lost count of how many times she had performed the move when she heard Ikki's loud voice burst from behind her.

"_Jinora_! What are you _doing_?!"

She gasped and froze guiltily, spinning to face her. "Ikki! I, ah, I was just...running through that form a couple of times..."

"You said you'd come back down!" she said, and Jinora realized with a panicked fluttering of her heart that Ikki looked legitimately hurt. "It's been two hours!"

"...Oh."

Ikki sighed, pushing her hair behind her ears and dropping her gaze. "Just go practice," she muttered. "If that's really what you want to do then I'm not going to stop you."

Before Jinora could protest, Ikki turned and walked back to their home, leaving her in agonized silence in the middle of the courtyard.

Jinora had run through the form a few more times, but found her spirit wasn't in the movements. Disheartened and dejected, she took a quick walk up to the temple to meditate, but found much to her frustration that for the first time in her memory, she couldn't. Her mind swam not with her studies, but with Ikki's dejected expression. Groaning, she pushed herself to her feet and wandered back out. Her feet took her through the trees towards the island's steep west-facing cliffs. She dropped down near the ledge to stare at the water, the bay stretching before her and opening to the seemingly endless ocean, the distant horizon blending perfectly with the sky.

Rubbing her eyes, she attempted meditation again, knowing she wouldn't get any more work done today if she didn't clear her mind out. This time, success welcomed her, and she calmly emptied her mind of her anxieties and guilt and worry. There was nothing but the quiet of the island and the gentle breeze stirring around her.

It was only after she had meditated for a few minutes that she realized that she was following Ikki's advice after all. This was what she needed - a moment to breathe, to separate herself from the immense pressure of taking the last level Airbending test and training to become the next Air Nomad representative. Already, she felt better, and she berated herself for not doing this sooner - or more often. It was surprising that her father had not already commented about her neglecting her meditations in favor of constant practice and study.

She and Ikki just had different ways of taking a breather, Jinora thought with surprising clarity. Whereas she unwound with meditation or a good story, Ikki played tag with their younger siblings and stole off to the city to see her friends. Ikki's advice hadn't been wrong; she just didn't realize that Jinora didn't quite relax from training the way Ikki did.

Of course, the fact still remained that Jinora had to be _reminded _to take the time to breathe, taking her back to the fact that Ikki had been right. But maybe that wasn't the only reason Ikki had insisted. Jinora was spending almost all of her time training at the temple or going to the Counsel meetings with her father; it had, she realized with a start, been veritable _ages _since she and Ikki did anything fun together.

Ikki had given her sound advice, but maybe she just missed Jinora, too.

She opened her eyes with a sigh, silently contemplating the view spilled out before her. In her desperation to get her tattoos, she had accidentally neglected her relationship with her siblings - but especially with Ikki. Family, she reminded herself firmly, was just as important as her training and her duties.

She stood and brushed herself off brusquely, walking back to the house and wandering through the halls until she found Ikki's room. Ikki was sitting on the bed, twining a squirming Taro's hair into a braid. She glanced up when Jinora timidly knocked on the doorframe, raising her eyebrows at her.

"Hey, um..." she glanced down, biting her lip and offering Ikki a smile. "Did you still want to go see a play and go to the park?"

A tiny grin twitched at Ikki's lips, eyes lighting up against her will. "That depends," she said lightly. "Are you going to sneak out of the theatre to practice?"

"No," Jinora smiled. "I promise."

The grin widened. She tied off Taro's braid, nudging her and telling her to go find Rohan before Airbending herself to her feet. She shut the distance between herself and Jinora, pulling her into a strong, friendly hug that Jinora happily returned. "Let's go, then."


End file.
